Oil and water famously don't mix, but the product of one and an element of the other can be combined to improve gasoline mileage.

The News staff

Sunday

May 10, 2009 at 12:01 AMMay 10, 2009 at 6:00 PM

That was the gist of Quentin Moore's senior project at Buhler High School, in which he built a device to separate hydrogen from plain tap water and inject it as a gas into his Jeep's intake manifold to mix with gasoline.

Moore estimated he spent 100 hours on the project.

"A lot of it was trial and error, guess and check," Moore said.

Water is poured into a PVC container with three anodes and three cathodes inside, connected to a car battery. The electricity causes hydrolysis, which separates the hydrogen from the oxygen in the water, turning it into a gas before it's pumped into the engine's intake along with air and gasoline.

Moore said he found a 60 percent improvement in gas mileage for the vehicle, though he said he couldn't drive around using it.

"It's got a couple bugs," Moore said. "A couple parts are too small so it gets a little hot."

Moore said he got the idea for the project after his father bought plans for a hydrogen-gasoline kit on the Internet, which he used as the basis for his own design.

As for his post-graduation plans, Moore has enlisted in the Air Force, where he said he hopes to work on F-15 fighter jet avionics systems.

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